That's right folks. It's my birthday! :) And I've got so much to celebrate- I am blessed with an amazing life and I'm so glad to be able to share it with all of you. Thank you all for being so inspirational and supportive in this little blog world. I hope everyone enjoys this beautiful fall day!

Cassity has an amazing blog where she features all kinds of fun projects from home decor to home renovations to DIY projects, and, apparently.... Ten June office makeovers!! That's right- Cassity is featuring us on her amazing blog today! I have been reading Remodelaholic for awhile and I've always been incredibly impressed and inspired by all of the fun projects that Cassity features. Needless to say, there was some high-fiving and happy dancing at our house last night- we're pretty excited to have our little office featured! And for those of you who are wondering... OF COURSE David has rubbed it in my face that his first blog post ever gets featured! Men.... :)

Hi friends! Usually I draft the posts but today I thought I'd let the hubby in on some blogging action. We've got a fun new project to share, so without further ado....

Hello out there- it's David, the other half of Ten June. So far, I've just watched over my lovely wife's shoulder as we got this blog on the road. But today, I decided I'd give it a shot myself and on what better a topic than the lovely stripes that we adorned our office walls with? And while no, this post has nothing to do with beer, I can say that yes, I'm a guy, so I had to start off my post with a little beer reference... Red Stripe Beer commercial anyone? It cracks me up every time. Hoo-ray for our stripes.

I have to post the disclaimer that we undertook this project pre-blogging and thus, we're sans mid-project pictures... so, with that said, I'll just have to describe it it for you.

If you recall from the "Before and Afters" in our House Tour, you will remember that all of the main room walls in the house were painted the same blah neutral color. Here's our office "before."

Just like all of the other neutral wall colors in the house, we decided right after moving in that this color had to go. We decided on a darker neutral in Olympic's Dusty Trail. As we painted the living room and hall, we contemplated what to do with the office. We knew that we loved the Dusty Trail color, but we also wanted something that would stand out and make the office a fun and inviting space. Michelle came across a stripe painting tutorial at Young House Love (our favorite go-to blog), and boom - we found what we were looking for. So we went for it- contrasting stripes with our beloved Dusty Trail and its complementary cousin Off White. We chose the complementary stripe color from the same paint sample chip as Dusty Trail to ensure a proper hue match. YHL suggests that you paint from two colors that are close in tone, but we wanted more of contrast and so we chose the darkest and lightest colors on the paint chip's spectrum.

So on to the fun part - the STRIPES. In preparation for the stripes, we painted the entire room in Olympic's Off White to establish a clean slate. Once the base was on the wall, the fun/hours of math/re-taping four million times to get a straight line/are-we-going-crazy-because-we're-trying-to-paint-horizontal-stripes-on-the-wall began.

We decided that we wanted to have an odd number of stripes so that the darker Dusty Trail would contrast against the white crown moulding at the top of the wall and the base board at the bottom of the wall. It took us awhile visualizing the stripes to help us to decide on the number that we wanted - turns out 9 was our lucky number. We divided our wall height by 9 and marked a light pencil notch on the wall at each measurement point.

Then I experimented with a couple of methods to set out our game plan for the stripes (taping paper to the wall? way too complicated. using a laser leveler? not accurate enough) and found that a good ol' fashioned tape measure was the best way to go. Michelle and I laid out the stripes by measuring from the ceiling down to the floor every three feet or so. The reason for this was to allow for shorter tape runs (trying to run a wall's length of painters tape gets a little messy) and to allow for "checks" for the proper dimensions of the stripes. I'm not going to lie- it was kind of difficult to remember which stripe was being painted and whether the tape had to go above or below the mark. When you're taping, you have to tape above the stripe line and below the stripe line and it ends up a little hairy looking (ie. like you've completely mismeasured the entire thing).

After a couple of hours of measuring and taping the walls, it was time to start rolling. As the paint went up, the stripes became visible and the effect we were looking for was coming to fruition. I'll point out a key step to the process - tape removal. It is crucial that the tape be removed while the paint is still wet to ensure clean, crisp stripes. Otherwise, as the paint dries, it will bleed under the tape. And yes, we learned that the hard way.

After all that work, we were really excited with the results. Here are the stripes, in their glory.

As you can see, the process was fairly easy and offers all kinds of character to brighten up a space.

We like the fact that the stripes peak through the view from our living room. We definitely got the fun character we were looking for. Cheers to Mic for her great idea!

So there we have it! David's first blog post ever and our amaaaazing office makeover. In the words of David, hoo-ray stripes!

It may only be mid September but the last couple of weeks have been like Christmas for me! Two amazing publications- Southern Flourish and Rue- have recently released editions of their online magazines. Each publication is chock full of beautiful, glossy images that make the wannabe designer in me drool.

Southern Flourish is an online mag that has been in publication since earlier this year. They focus on young, Southern style in all areas of life- fashion and style, food and travel, home and garden, and everything typically southern. Sounds right up my alley, huh? Here's a glimpse into some of my favorite pages from the amazing fall issue that just came out.

Aren't these images incredible?! Here is the the full issue of Rue's latest edition so that you can go check it out. In fact, head on over to both of these websites and show these fabulous publications a little love!!

Also, I'm linking up today a link party hosted by the wonderful fabulous k. Check out her amazing and FABULOUS blog. :)

Why hello! Anyone notice anything different about Ten June?? That's right, folks, I've got a new blog layout! The amazingly talented Marina from Penny Lane Designs helped design the new Ten June. I'm in love! From the layout to the style to the font, it's exactly what I was looking for. She did a great job! So welcome to the new and improved Ten June.

We've also made a mini-improvement somewhere else around here. When David and I moved into our house a few months ago, the front bedroom belonged to the previous owner's eight-year-old daughter. Here's a refresher of what it looked like before we moved in, just in case you don't remember.

Helloooo, Pepto Bismol. Super cute for a little girl but not so much for our main guest bedroom. So, we stocked up on a few cans of paint + primer combo and switched over to a much gentler light green color. And no, it wasn't very much fun to paint over a hot pink ceiling!

For the last couple of months (since the big paint makeover), this room has been left sort of empty without anything on the walls. David and I decided that we didn't want to allocate too much moolah for decorating the room (we had already shelled out about $100 for paint and about $150 for the new bedding). Let's just say our budget was somewhere around.... $20. Okay, so maybe we planned to spend a little bit more than that, but you get the gist. While it was quite easy to fill up the windowed wall with the dresser (who, by the way, is just begging to be refinished- another project, another day!!) and mirror, the wall adjacent to the doorway had a big, open space that needed to be filled.

I decided that because the wall is so large, a couple of prints just wouldn't do it. So I headed over to Wally World and bought a bunch of cheap wooden frames. I chose a couple of frames in each of the various sizes that my local store had. After adding a few unused frames from our collection at home, it was time to spray paint. I broke out the white high gloss spray paint and the frames transitioned from mismatched wood tones to a crisp, clean white set of frames.

Then, it was time to hang the frames. David and I played around with the layout of the frame collage on the floor. I've seen lots of suggestions to sketch and cut out paper models of the frames so that you can move them around easily and test out the layout of the collage without putting too many holes in the wall. While that's an excellent idea, I'm a little too lazy for that, so I just went straight for the hammer and nails. :)

So here's the picture frame layout we ended up with. I'm not sold on it- in fact, I think we need a few more frames to even it out. I also think we may have gone a little high with the group, but it's a big, empty wall, so it may take awhile to fill it up and get it just right.

Up next? Time to actually fill the frames! Don't forget our cheapola budget... in all honesty, we had maxed out the budget with the frames and spray paint, so the art had to be free. I rummaged through my art and scrapbook stuff that I found around the house, found a couple of images and quotes from Google, and voila! I've got art. Here's what I ended up with. [Please excuse the limey color that these pictures somehow turned into from camera to computer- the wall color is actually a lovely shade of light green!]

Let's take a closer look. The smaller frames are simply filled with funky scrapbook paper.

This frame is simply a cute quote I found online, printed on some shiny scrapbook paper.

It's twin sized frame holds a few scrapbook buttons (fabric covered brads with a little sparkle on them). I'm not sure I'm loving what's in this frame, but it is a good start and I really like the dimension that the buttons bring to the mix.

After reading this genius post on Young House Love, I decided to add some color to the picture frame collage with several Martha Stewart paint chips. That's right, these are just the free paint chip samples that I picked up from Home Depot. Can we say free art?! I love the modern aspect and the beautiful color that these bring into the room.

I also printed a few botanical print images off of Google images.

The piece de resistance is actually a really fun project that I've got coming, so stay tuned. Until then, all we've got in the center of the collage is a blank canvas.

Well, you may think I'm crazy for using Home Depot scraps and Google images, but I'm pretty happy with my DIY cheap art! The fact that it's cheap and done by yours truly gives me the chance to switch up the art, instead of feeling obligated to keep an expensive piece in place. While I wish I could fill every wall with fine art, sometimes scrapbook paper will just have to do! Here's the current shot of the guest bedroom wall.

Unfortunately, our bathroom renovation is still at the I'm-incredibly-ugly-and-I-look-like-an-abandoned-building-or-pile-of-construction-junk phase. And, as I explained before, it will likely be in that phase for awhile, based upon our hectic work schedules and jam-packed social calendar (hey- we're popular! only kidding... but it is football season and we can't give all of our Saturdays up for renovation!).

I'm already tired of posting ugly "before" pictures, so I thought I'd mix it up with some pretty "after" pictures that David and I have pulled for our bathroom inspiration file. The idea is that we've pulled these pictures because we love the general theme or because there are certain features we like in the room. I think you'll be able to decipher a common thread as to what we like. And hopefully you'll get a good understanding of what we hope to make our master bathroom into (eventually!).

On to the pretty pictures....

Aren't these photos just gorgeous?! All photos are images from Decor Pad.

So what do you guys think? Should we break out some color or do you like the all-white theme? Have you seen any amazing bathrooms or bathroom elements lately? Send me pictures or links if you have!! Happy Friday!

Meet Michelle

I'm a southern gal with an eye for young traditional design. I'm a self-proclaimed painter, crafter, decorator and do-it-yourselfer. Also a wife + momma to a toddler boy and a baby girl. Welcome to Ten June!